This has been a thorn in my side. I have been soaking bottles in a bucket and them scraping/scrubbing them off with the backside of a sponge.

I took other posters advice about cleaning equipment with Oxyclean free(thank you guys for this). I noticed one bottle had some weird haze in it, so I filled a bucket full of Oxyclean and water and put in a little more Oxyclean in the hazey bottle.

For the hell of it , I threw unch of labeled bottles in the bucket and went to retrieve them and the labels were practically falling off. Even a good part of the glue was gone, I literally had to lightly wipe the glue off. The Oxyclean is also a great label remover!

I can't think of an easier way...but since everyone is so helpful here...How do you get the labels off of bottles?

Oxyclean works very well, but don't leave them to soak too long - I forgot a bucket full of them over a week-end, and the Oxyclean had crystallized to the bottles, and had to be scrubbed off. I'm concerned about the inside of those bottles.

It doesn't work for plastic labels. One that comes to mind is an apple cider, called Cracked Apple I believe? They're impossible to get off.